Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.

—Otto von Bismark

—§—

Mescal neither.

It starts out pretty enough, with orderly maguey fields growing away in the beautiful Oaxaca countryside.

The plants must grow for eight years before they are large enough for harvesting.

Working in a maguey field has got to be tough. The leaves have sharp serrations and a needle-like point at the tip of each.

To harvest the plants, the spiky leaves are cut away with a sharp blade at the end of a pole. Then the swollen stem can be cut off at ground level.

This core was massive. I could barely lift it.

Now it starts to get ugly. The cores are burned in an open fire to enhance the sugar content.

Next, they are mashed in a mill to separate the sugary pulp from the fibers. The traditional way is the best way: using a horse to pull the mill wheel round and round.

What results is an unappetizing mess. How the hell did anyone ever figure this out?

Looks like cow manure to me.

It can only get better from here. Or can it? The mashed, burned maguey is forked into a wooden tub with water added and the whole mess is allowed to ferment for three days.

This tank was bubbling briskly. You'd think it would smell awful, but the tank gives off a pleasant smoky molasses odor.

The fermented liquid is drawn off and placed in a charcoal-fired still. A crude still. Oh, you can get that mass-produced stuff made in gas-fired stills, but then you might as well drink screw-top wine. Or lite beer. Real mescal drinkers insist on distillation over a wood fire.

Let me explain how this works. The fire, as you can see, is over there on the left. Above it, mostly hidden by the plastic tub and the square metal can, is a copper flask that holds maybe 10-20 gallons of fermented maguey mash. The mash boils, and water vapor and alcohol vapor carrying impurities that give mescal its flavor is carried through that semi-horizontal copper pipe to a coil in the cold water tank. The various vapors condense in the coil and drip out of a spigot at the bottom of the water tank into that grimy used cooking oil container standing in the rectangular recess at the base of the tank.

And this is one of the good installations. Here's another still, currently not in operation.

Mezcal Mi Tierra. My Land Mescal brand. Be sure and look for it in your local expendio.

The mescal is aged for a couple of years in oak barrels. The last step is bottling, painstakingly done in your better fabricas.

From this point, the mescal is rushed to your nearby open-air mercado where it's placed in the traditional liquor-cum-embroidered-blouse display. There, you can sample the stuff for free. The sample cups look pretty small, but Clint tells me that after a few of them, you really need to get something to eat. Fast.